Editing Midrash (section)

=== Origins ===
With the growing canonization of the contents of the [[Hebrew Bible]], both in terms of the books that it contained and the version of the text in them and an acceptance that new texts could not be added, there came a need to produce material that would clearly differentiate between that text and rabbinic interpretation of it. By collecting and compiling these thoughts, they could be presented in a manner that helped to refute claims that they were only human interpretations—the argument being that, by presenting the various collections of different schools of thought, each of which relied upon close study of the text, the growing difference between early biblical law and its later rabbinic interpretation could be reconciled.<ref name="auto"/>